Thursday, May 01, 2014

As Brother Charlie Pierce Points Out

First of all, how can you misspell "Whoa," especially in a headline? Second, and infinitely more important, the original Irish Parliament, to say nothing of the original government of the Irish Free State, and then the Republic of Ireland, was chockfull of people who had "killed someone," or ordered the killing of someone. Michael Collins was the Minister of Defense for the IFS, for pity's sake. Liam Tobin was a member of Collins's "Squad" that helped decapitate the British intelligence service in Ireland and, eventually, Tobin became the superintendent of the Dail Eireann. There are, of course, examples beyond Ireland.

...

Look, the 61.7% of my family that lays claim to Irish heritage redacted most of the lurid, juicy details about Ireland from my upbringing. They passed down a weakness for the bottle and a love of good storytelling, but that's basically it -- I came figuratively to the land of my forefathers like Sean Thornton in The Quiet Man

a stranger and a Yank, with no stories of oppression, ancient betrayals or blood-oaths of revenge hanging from my neck.

But my parents were also school teachers who would have been appalled if any of their students had turned in homework this shoddy. No ones is asking the kids at Vox to do PhD research into the underlying causes of The Troubles before taking up their quills. But at the very least they could have asked their wealthy patrons for an advance on their allowance sufficient to rent one damn episode of The West Wing: